“I really just tried to form a connection with everyone on all the floors and tried to prove that I was actually a person, and not just some political figure,” Alyssa Moser of Clearwater said.

Moser was named the 2019 Cornhusker Girls State Governor in Lincoln last Wednesday afternoon.

“A good friend of mine came up with the slogan, ‘Don’t be a poser, vote for Moser!’ when I was struggling to come up with something,” she said.

There were eight Nationalist candidates for governor at Girls State. Moser won the primary to face Federalist party candidate Layla Omari of Lincoln North Star in a gubernatorial debate.

“I honestly can’t remember a lot of the debate questions, but the debate was where I was able to build my platform as someone who advocated for small rural communities and for agricultural producers,” she said.

Moser said because the majority of Girls State citizens were from small communities, she was able to earn a lot of their votes just by talking about her own experiences growing up on a farm near a small town.

“I had never debated before, so I was pretty nervous, but I actually kind of had fun debating,” she said.

In addition to being named governor at Girls State, Moser was also elected as one of two senators to represent Nebraska at Girls Nation in Washington, D.C. in July. The candidates nominated themselves.

“Each citizen wrote down two names on a slip of paper to vote for who they wanted to attend Girls Nation,” Moser said. “The top 10 interviewed, and four girls were selected from there: 2 senators and 2 alternates.”

She and Aanya Agarwal from Omaha were selected as the Nebraska senators for Girls Nation.

Moser, who will be a senior at O'Neill High School in the fall, is the daughter of Chris and Sandy Moser of Clearwater.